Kintail LAMM

After the organiser's dire warnings last Wednesday of severe weather, the LAMM last weekend turned out to be the nicest mountain marathon I have completed. To be fair to them, the abandonment of the Welsh 1000er Race the same weekend gives an idea of what the weather could have been like. The weather was perfect - not too hot, good visibility and only the odd shower of rain with enough wind to keep off the midgies.

Kintail is a great area with plenty of hills on the various lists with a great network of stalkers paths, some in better nick than others. Al picked the B class and with my lack of long distance training it suited me to do something shorter too. Day 1 starting at Cluanie Inn was a interesting route, traversing into remote corries but avoiding too many tussocks or peat hags. The checkpoints were easy to find, although we messed up the only slightly tricky one due to me paying no attention to the checkpoint description. It was upsetting that we missed out on the summit of An Socach by about 500m. So a zero bag weekend for me.

The overnight campsite in Carnach (Glen Elchaig)was fantastic. Dry and grassy with even the sun decided to come out to dry our shoes. A far cry from my last MM experience sharing a tent with Henry Blake. There was about 2 inches of water sloshing about inside and a gale outside. Not very nice after having struggled around the Elite course on the OMM. Much more pleasant.

The less said about route choice on Day 2, the better. Our choice of route to the first checkpoint was inexplicable in the extreme. I can only blame our chasing start number, B13, for our idiocy. After that, once I had put my toys back into my pram, we had a great day in the sun. Enjoying some more fantastic running and some great downhills on our way back to the event centre to finish in 24 place.

The distance was about 24km on the first day and 20km on the second - both days much longer than any of my runs this year, but I seemed to cope pretty well with not too much soreness afterwards.